Claire Bishop discusses artists that utilize what Nicolas Bourriaud has identified in his essay as “Relational Aesthetics”. Through artists such as Rirkrit Travanija, Liam Gillick, Bishop explains that relational works have the ability to be so open-ended that in the end, they can be superficial, as the situations are constructed for an audience that isn’t able to get to the question of ‘what for?’
“What for? If you forget the ‘what for?’ I’m afraid you’re left with simple Nokia art-producing interpersonal relations for their own sake and never addressing their political aspects.”
This is a quote from Bourriaud that Bishop uses to prove a point about Tiravanija’s work. Artists that utilize relational aesthetics tend to create “microtopias” rather than utopias, where a situation is constructed for a specific audience to become involved in.
“’It seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows’ (RA, p. 45). This DIY, microtopian ethos is what Bourriaud perceives to be the core political significance of relational aesthetics.”
Bishop argues that within a fully successful democracy (which these ‘microtopias’ aim to illustrate), antagonism, defined by Bishop as conflicts and instabilities inherent to any society or community, is necessary to sustain possibilities of "radical imagination." She uses Santiago Sienna as an example of an artist who achieves this. Without antagonism, you are left with an authoritative order. According to Bishop, the works that do not contain “relational antagonism” do not consider political and social aspects and are therefore lacking in relevant content.
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